While we were generally unimpressed with the performace
of the 1.5 GHz Pentium 4,it does offer quite a bit of
value because it is priced economically and offers and easy upgrade path to
other socket 478 Pentium 4 processors like the 2.0GHz chip we are looking at
today.

This particular Pentium4 2.0 GHz uses
the Williamette core and fits into the Socket m478 formfactor. At the time
of this review, the cost of this chip alone is comparable to
the cost of your
average whitebox system. With a street price of about $620 CDN now, this
processor obviously isn't for everyone. If you want top end Intel performance
it's about the only option you have because while the Northwood P4's have been
announced, they're still in short supply.

As we all
know, with the introduction of the Pentium4, Intel introduced quite a bunch of
new technologies such as the 400 MHz FSB, SSE2 and what they call Netburst
Architecture. Don't be fooled, Netburst won't
make your internet any faster or more vibrant, but it will speed up every
application which is written for it. What happened with the P4 architecture
is that the pipeline was been extended from 10 stages in the Pentium 3, to 20
stages in the Pentium 4.

Why was the pipeline extended? Wel, it allows
Intel to ramp up the clock speed of the Pentium 4 processor on a faster
scale than before. What is the disadvantage here? Instructions Per Clock (IPC)
have decreased, so what Intel has done is decrease the overall work the CPU does
per clock cycle (measured in MHz). So in effect the chip is doing less
work, not more.

Intel make up for
this decrease in IPC by having the CPU set to a higher clock speed to balance off
things. For a more detailed explanation on the Pentium 4 architecture and all its
glory, please read the introduction of out Pentium 4
1.5GHz review.

The 2.0GHz Williamette

Compared
to the Pentium 4 Socket 423 the newer (and not obsolete) socket 478 formfactor
is much smaller. The smaller formfactor saves money on
packaging and is the only form that the Northwood Pentium 4 processors will come
in.

The first thing someone
would notice about the Pentium 4 chips is that large heat spreader. It's there to protect
the die of the actual processor from damage. Since the Pentium 4 is still
built on FC-PGA technology, Intel calls this packaging FC-PGA2.

While Intel never really had the problems
AMD had with their flipchip cores getting cracked or crushed, it was nice
to see that Intel took the next step and added some extra protection. Under the nickel
plated copper slug lays the 2.0 GHz Willaimette P4 core with 8KB L1 cache and
256KB L2. The core is built on 0.18 micron technology.

Overclocking the Pentium 4

So how high were we able to push this little Pentium
chip? Since all retail Intel CPU's are multiplier locked, the only way
to overclock them is via FSB adjustments. The highest we could push it to was 108 MHz FSB which
equals a clock speed of 2.16 GHz.

This speed is not really that surprising since everyone knows that the 0.18
micron P4's hit the wall at around 2 GHz. Funny, a 160
MHz overclock is lousy these days! =)